Today, U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09), a member of the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, reacted to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s letter to Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-MA-01) again refusing to comply with Neal’s request for Donald Trump’s tax returns pursuant to the chairman’s clear power under 26 U.S. Code § 6103(f).

“This absurd letter calls Congress doing its job ‘unprecedented.’ What’s unprecedented is this Secretary refusing to comply with our lawful, Article I request. What’s unprecedented is a Justice Department that again sees its role as being bodyguard to the executive and not the rule of law. What’s unprecedented is an entire federal government working in concert to shield a corrupt President from legal accountability. If these guys think they can outlast us with these tactics, they’re dead wrong. We’re not going anywhere.”

Rep. Pascrell has been Congress’s most vocal proponent of releasing President Trump’s tax returns in order to reveal any potential conflicts of interest. Since February 2017, Pascrell has led the call for the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means to invoke Section 6103 of the tax code to obtain Trump’s tax returns. Pascrell believes that exposing the tax returns to sunlight is critical to revealing any potential conflicts of interest, including those with Russian entities. In the 115th Congress, Republicans voted 18 times to block Democratic resolutions seeking the tax returns.